


trick or treat

by ciaconnaa



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Humor, but it's still not that bad I gotchu fam, nothing bad happens y'all I swear, well until part two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-05-18 17:18:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19339033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ciaconnaa/pseuds/ciaconnaa
Summary: “Oh my god,” Peter nearly yelps as he grabs the smoothie away from Morgan, despite her protests. “Pepper’s allergic to strawberries? Why didn't you tell me!?”“She is, but we don't know if I'm allergic because Dad never lets me have one, just in case. So I thought I'd do an experiment to try and find out.” Her eyes are squinted slightly as she carefully taps her lips with her fingers. “Are my lips swollen?”“Morgan. When Pepper says allergic, how bad-““She uses the phrasedeadly.”“Ohmygod.”





	1. Chapter 1

Peter tries to be a good babysitter (Big brother? Caretaker? Superhero stand in?) for Morgan when she needs it, and he thinks he’s done a pretty good job.

Pepper and Tony recently made the move back to New York so that Morgan could attend a public elementary school and make friends at the start of first grade. When they settled back into Manhattan, Pepper spoke one thing into law: if they nor Happy can take care of Morgan, then Peter’s in charge. Which...happens more often than one might think.

But it’s fine. Great, even. Peter thinks it’s pretty cool, beating out Rhodey (okay, so Rhodey lives in D.C and isn’t exactly a viable candidacy for second place babysitter, but it’s still outranking a colonel which basically means...he’s a general. Peter Parker’s a general. And Spider-Man. General Spider-Man of the Avengers) and taking care of Morgan is easy enough. The kid is wicked smart for her age, no surprise, and she thinks that building with lego is fun. So after things like countless trips to the park and one _kickass_ Disney princess lego castle built, Peter would say (not to brag) that they’re like, _best friends._

And then he ruins everything.

With a _smoothie._

“How old do you have to be to do a real science experiment?” Morgan asks. She’s standing on the tips of her toes as she watches the woman behind the counter stuff the blender full of fruit.

Peter, with his mango smoothie already in hand, takes a long sip. “Well,” he presses his tongue to the roof of his mouth before continuing because _ow cold._ “The only difference between screwing around and a science experiment is writing it down, so….” he trails off, taking another long sip as the loud noise of the blender echoes off the walls of the smoothie shop. “If you’re writing it all down, you’re sciencing. Simple as that.”

Morgan nods as the woman slides her drink down the counter with a smile. Little Morgan bounces on her toes in order to reach for it. Peter watches as Morgan grips the plastic cup and stares at the straw, almost _hesitant,_ before she starts sucking down the smoothie the same way Peter is.

“You got an experiment you want to do?” Peter asks as he takes a seat at a small table. She sits across from him, legs folded underneath her for a height boost, and nods, before she takes out her matching blue sparkle notebook and pencil from her backpack.

“Yeah,” she taps the smoothie cup. “I’m doing one right now.”

Peter doesn’t know what she’s talking about, but something tells him it’s _not good._

“I’ve never had strawberries,” Morgan clarifies, and then, all at once, Peter relaxes. Sort of. Okay, not really, but he’s halfway to stopping the oncoming heart attack and that’s got to count for something.

“Okay,” he drags out, confused, because on the other hand, how the hell has Morgan never had a strawberry? She’s not that picky of an eater. “So this experiment is to, what? See if you like them?”

She takes the _most dramatic pause,_ as she finishes writing down all her “science”. Her handwriting isn’t exactly calligraphy (or, maybe it is. It’s not like he can ready calligraphy, even if it is all fancy and a practiced art) but he can still make out her notes and the title of her experiment:

 

_Strawberry Allergy Test:_

_Dad: not allergic_

_Mom: allergic_

_Me : ______________

 

In that moment, he knows what a heart attack feels like.

Tony’s gonna kill him. Pepper. Then, Happy. Rhodey. And then Strange is going to use his golden circle voodoo to somehow resuscitate him and let them do it all over again.

Basically, he is so, so dead.

“Oh my _god,”_ Peter nearly yelps as he grabs the smoothie away from Morgan, despite her protests. “Pepper’s allergic to strawberries? Why didn't you tell me!?”

“ _She is_ , but we don't know if _I'm_   allergic because Dad never lets me have one, just in case. So I thought I'd do an experiment to try and find out.” Her eyes are squinted slightly as she carefully taps her lips with her fingers. “Are my lips swollen?”

They aren’t, thank _god._ “Morgan. When Pepper says allergic, how bad-“

“She uses the phrase _deadly.”_

_“Ohmygod.”_

Morgan just might be evil and cruel, because she’s unsympathetic to Peter’s cardiac arrest that _she caused_ . She stops messing with her mouth and presses her palms to her cheeks before sticking out her tongue. “Is my _tongue_ swollen?”

Peter doesn’t know a ton about allergies, but he knows enough that the serious reactions always happen pretty quickly. If nothing happens within the next thirty minutes, she’ll probably be in the clear but it’s only been about…oh, three minutes since she sucked down the first sip of that smoothie. That strawberry bomb could go off at any _second._

Which just... _can’t_ happen. Not in a smoothie shop. Not on General Spider-Man’s watch.

“We have to go to a hospital.” Peter declares, sitting up so fast he ends up upsetting his mango smoothie. Normally, he’d offer to help clean it up but he’s facing the possibility of accidentally killing _Morgan Stark_ so he hopes he’ll be forgiven.

Morgan pouts and tries to reach for the smoothie again, but Peter grabs and tosses it in the trash can across the shop like the NBA star he is. Which is to say that one...kinda spills everywhere too. Oh, this poor shop. He’ll never be able to go back.

“I feel _fine,”_ Morgan argues.“I can breathe and everything.”

“That could change at any moment! Allergic reactions are fickle. If you die from this strawberry smoothie I swear, I’m gonna-”

Morgan stands up along with him and presses herself close to him; he can smell those damn strawberries on her breath. “...spidey sense?” she whispers.

“Huh?”

“Your spidey sense,” she repeats again. “You feel it when there’s danger, right?”

He’s not really following. “Uh, Right.”

“Do you feel it now?”

Peter feels a lot of things right now: his hair turning grey, his blood pressure skyrocketing, his heart about to give out. But...no tingle of his spidey sense. Peter Parker might be freaking out, but the Spider-Man in him is giving Morgan the all clear.

“...No,” he admits, much to Morgan’s glee. “No, I don’t.”

“So that would mean,” she scribbles down more notes on her notebook. “I’m not allergic. Experiment complete.”

God, this kid is something else.

“Morgan,” Peter croaks out quietly, “My sixth sense isn’t exactly a litmus test for allergies. We _need_ to get you to a doctor.” Just because he trusts his spidey sense with his life doesn’t mean he completely trusts it to save _everyone else's._ It’s complicated like that.

Morgan’s whole face scrunches in a pout. Five minutes. It’s been five minutes since the strawberry of doom.  “I told you. I can breathe _fine._ My throat doesn’t hurt. Do we _have to?”_

Sure, that’s good news. But. “One thousand percent. Let’s go.”

She barely gets her notebook back in her backpack before Peter’s dragging her out of the shop. Once on the sidewalk, Peter starts fiddling with his bracelets that hold his nano tech Iron Spider suit, and Morgan gets even more excited considering she very well might be poisoned at this very second.

“I get to swing?” she whispers. “You never let me swing!”

“Yeah, well,” Peter discreetly drags them to the nearest alley, allowing the suit to cover what he’s already: he’s thankful that the early spring heat left him in only a tee and some shorts, because it’s not always the most comfortable to layer underneath it. “You tell me if you start to feel sick,” Peter commands, as if it’ll do much good. It’s five blocks to the nearest hospital, May’s hospital, and he has Karen contact her to explain the need for fifty epipens for Morgan on standby (and maybe a sedative for him) as he swings over there in record time.

Two minutes. He’s killing it. (Pun...not intended).

And Morgan is still insisting she feels fine.

Peter manages to find yet another corner of obscurity to change back into Peter Parker right outside the hospital. (The great part about being a _friendly neighborhood Spider-Man_ in New York is that eventually, the novelty wears off and Spider-Man is as common as every other weirdo sighting. People don’t really pay him much mind.) Morgan is still fine, tentatively touching her lips and cheeks as he rushes them inside. The nurse at the emergency room waiting desk has to listen to Peter ramble on about how he’s the worst babysitter because the kid might be dying but _not yet_ and strawberries are the worst and _do you have an epipen._

May comes down maybe three minutes later, out of breath maybe, but pretty calm, and leads the two of them around back, explaining that they just need to watch her for a few minutes in case of a severe allergic reaction. All in all, a better explanation that Peter can give.

“I think she’s okay…” May says as she looks Morgan over on her cot; the kid nods along with that assessment. “We’ll keep her here for a bit to make sure, but Pete: I don’t think she has a strawberry allergy. At least not one as bad as Pepper’s.”

“That’s what I’ve been _saying,”_ Morgan scoffs. She’s already reaching for her notebook in her backpack once more to scribble more notes. Peter lets her this time, opting for silence as he buries his face in his hands and tries to get his heart rate down. “How long do I have to stay here?”

May has the nerve to look _amused._ As if her beloved nephew wasn’t about to be guillotined on the front steps of Stark Industries. “An hour. Just to be safe.”

“A whole _hour!?”_

“That’s what you get for tricking Peter into letting you try strawberries.”

“It wasn’t a trick,” Morgan stresses, and Peter wills himself to look up and give her the stink eye. “It was an experiment. Peter said it was, as long as I write everything down. Otherwise it’s just _screwing around._ But not a trick.”

“Morgan,” Peter sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. May puts a pulse oximeter on her finger to keep track of her heart rate, but Peter’s pretty sure that it’s just there for his ease. “Experiments have safety protocols. Scientific methods. A hypothesis that everyone in the room knows about before said experiment may or may not blow up.”

“So….I did science wrong?”

“Yes. You scienced wrong.”

Morgan grumbles, looking back down at her notes. “But I wrote everything down! I made notes. I kept track of my symptoms -”

Peter reaches forward and grabs Morgan’s hand, bringing it to his mouth to leave a few quick kisses. “You _scared_ me. This wasn’t safe. You can’t ever, _ever_ do that to someone. If something happened to you...” he trails off, staring at her heart rate, and wills himself to remain calm.

She looks puzzled. “But you’re Spider-Man,” she whispers. “It had to be you. Dad or Mom wouldn’t know if I was going to be having a reaction, but you would. You always know when something dangerous is gonna happen before it happens because of your Spidey sense.”

“I -” he stutters, “It doesn’t really work like that.”

She taps the notebook, a shit-eating grin on her face. “My experiment says it does.”

May wheezes out a laugh at his expense.

Everything is terrible.

“I even figured out what it takes to swing with Spider-Man,” she goes on. “But that one was just an accident.”

This time May’s laugh is _ear-splitting_ while Peter’s jaw nearly falls to the floor.

Morgan be such a little shit.

While Peter tries to remember what words are, Morgan flips the page in her notebook, settling in for another half-assed _experiment._ “What if we did an experiment to see how Dad would react to seeing us eating strawberry ice cream?”

Oh, man. Peter already knows what would happen. Chaos. Tears. A call for an ambulance that definitely wouldn’t be for Morgan. “Kid, your dad has a bad heart. And a bad arm. Bad ankles. Every single joint of his needs a spray of WD-40. We’re not doing this to him. He survived the infinity stones, but if he sees you with a bowl of strawberry ice cream he just might drop dead.”

That doesn’t seem to worry her. At all. Poor Mister Stark. “He’ll be fine! He’ll see I’m not allergic and be okay.”

Peter’s not so sure. “This isn’t even an experiment. This is a prank.”

“But if we write everything _down…_ then it’s an experiment, right? _”_

“No.”

Morgan starts swinging her legs back and forth off the side of the cot. “Fine. So it’s a prank. But you _did_ say you wanted to prank him back after what he did to Karen.”

The memory immediately gives Peter an oncoming migraine. He has no idea where Tony got the idea to temporarily swap out his AI for a replacement that sounded _exactly_ like _Daffy Duck_ but he definitely still hasn’t forgiven him for it. It took him a _week_ of absolute insanity and the loss of several brain cells for him and Ned to go through the code and reset Karen.

So, Peter can’t be faulted when he finds himself saying: “Okay, yeah. Let’s prank him.”

May swears as she leaves to go back to the ER floor, grumbling about how she refuses to be a part of this charade, as Morgan cheers.

“But just Tony. Your mother is a saint who brought you into this world and doesn’t deserve this kind of torment.”

“Agreed,” Morgan nods, already scribbling her plans away even though Peter has definitely explained this is not an experiment. He starts talking dramatics and logistics of the prank: setting the scene as something casual and having the realization be slow and delayed. “Should we leave the carton out so he’ll see it?” she asks.

“Maybe. But he’ll probably figure it out pretty quickly without it. Pink ice cream is usually strawberry flavor.”

“How long do you think it’ll take him to notice?”

“Two minutes. Tops.”

“I say...five.”

“Five?”

“Yeah, five.”

Peter snorts out a laugh. “Fine. It’s a bet.”

“No, it’s a _prank.”_

“It’s both.”

“But it’s not an experiment?”

Peter whines, letting his head fall forward onto Morgan’s cot. He feels her pat his head in a very condescending _there-there_ gesture. “Oh my god.”

She reaches around and starts poking at his cheek. “Can we leave early? I told you I’m fine.”

“No. You’re going to sit there for the remaining 42 minutes or whatever it is until May says you’re in the clear.”

“But I’m not _allergic.”_

“You’d better hope not. Otherwise the prank is off. You’ll go into anaphylactic shock, Tony will kill me, and then you’ll have to go my funeral instead.”

“Your funeral would be really boring.”

“Gee. Thanks.”

“We could still do the prank even if I am allergic.” She reasons. “There’s cotton candy flavored ice cream, that’s pink. He might think that’s strawberry.”

Peter blinks. “We should do a DNA test on you while you’re here. I fear you might be part demon.”

“Uncle Rhodey says the same thing.”

“Uncle Rhodey is right.” He sits up, checks her heart rate one last time and finally, finally feels at ease. He thinks she’s right. Turns out, Morgan’s not allergic to strawberries. But that doesn’t mean they won’t wait out the full hour per protocol. “Hey, did you even like them?”

“Like what?”

“The strawberries.”

“Oh.” She pauses, then shrugs. “Not really. The mango smoothie is way better.”

With a groan, Peter lets his head fall forward one last time, intent on not moving until their full hour is up.


	2. Chapter 2

With a mouth full of strawberry ice cream, Peter announces, “This is a terrible idea.”

Morgan sits beside him on the couch, legs crisscross applesauced with the bowl of ice cream in her lap. She continues to stare at the television, hung on David Attenborough’s every word as he narrates life under the sea. “It’s a good idea,” she stresses lightly, clearly more entertained by creepy fish than him.

Peter shovels - and he does quite literally mean shovel, he grabbed a long wooden stirring spoon from the drawer just to make Morgan giggle a little - another bite from the carton that he keeps in his own lap. It’s cold, making his legs go a little tingly and numb, but he figures he might as well get used to it. His heart will be cold soon when he’s dead, six feet under the ground, because Tony kills him for what is honestly the worst prank in the history of forever.

“Your father is going to  _ dump  _ my body into that ocean,” he says, gesturing to the screen with the spoon; a bit of ice cream flies off. “I’m going to be eaten by that demon fish.”

_ “Dragon fish.” _

“Are you seeing it? It’s definitely a demon fish.”

Morgan rolls her eyes, taking another bite of her ice cream. She’s eating in much smaller bites because while she very much wants to do this prank, and she’s very much not allergic to strawberries, she very much does not like the taste of strawberry ice cream.

Go figure.

“Are you going to be able to keep it together?” Morgan asks when Peter squirms on his side of the couch when the dragon fish snatches out and eats it’s prey. Foreshadowing at its finest. 

“Yeah,” Peter sighs, eating another giant bite of ice cream. Morgan wrinkles her nose as she watches him licks the back of his hand where its dripped. “I’m Spider-Man. I pretend all the time.”

“Pretend to be a normal human being or…?”

"Har-har. Very funny."

The door opens, and Peter only jumps out of skin a  _ little bit _ . Morgan still kicks at his hip in warning.

Of course, it doesn’t go unnoticed by Tony. “Watching something scary? I told you guys, you’re gonna-” He pauses, likely looking at the screen. Peter isn’t sure. He’s too scared to look over the back of the couch and check. “Oh, god.” The dragon fish has been replaced with an equally creepy looking fish. “Isn’t that the stuff of nightmares.”

“It’s an  _ Angler Fish,  _ Daddy.” Morgan corrects. 

“It looks like Happy before he gets a cup of morning coffee.” 

Peter lets out a snort of laughter, still tainted with his nervousness, as Tony finally peeks his head over the back of the couch. He sees the ice cream and actually smiles. “Gimme,” he says, opening his mouth wide before Morgan feeds her dad a spoonful before she goes back to shoveling a good amount into her own mouth. “Oooh. Yum. I haven’t had strawberry in forever,” he says, licking a bit that’s at the corner of his lips. Tony glances Peter’s way, pulling a face at the lack of bowl and proper spoon. “Really, kid? With the mixing spoon? Pep hates it when you do that -”

He freezes, pupils blown wide.

The following interaction would have been the funniest thing Peter’s ever seen had he not been internally wondering what his tombstone would read.

Tony yanks the spoon out of his daughter’s hand before he holds his hand out, palm out, right underneath Morgan’s mouth. “Spit it out, now!”

“What?” Morgan asks. She’s got so much ice cream in her mouth it looks like she’s bleeding the stuff; pink trickles out of the corners of her mouth and even spews out when she talks. 

“Spit it out, I’m not kidding!”

“Dad,” she manages to get out before she swallows the bite of ice cream entirely. Tony looks seconds away from dropping dead, he’s so pale. “What is the problem?”

Honestly. Morgan should be on Broadway. Her acting is unmatched. 

“Baby, we talked about this!” Tony hisses, yanking the ice cream and spoon out of her reach. “Your mother is allergic to strawberries, you could be too!”

“It’s not a strawberry!” she defends, pointing to the carton. “It’s strawberry  _ flavored.  _ That’s not the same thing…right?”

Her voice pitches a little into worry at the end of the sentence. As if she’s not smart enough to know they put real strawberries in ice cream. Ooh, she’s good. 

But poor Tony is the one rightfully terrified. He looks up at Peter, desperate, and he’s so concerned for Morgan that he doesn’t realize the terribly pained look on Peter’s face is out of fear of his own safety rather than Morgan’s. “Pete, go get your EpiPen.”

That’s not what he expects Tony to say. “My...EpiPen?” Peter has his own food allergies to worry about, and back when he had asthma and other health problems, May and Ben sorta always made sure he had one or the school nurse did. But he hasn’t carried one in years. Especially not since he’s known Tony. “I don’t have....” he trails off.

Tony has his eyes on his daughter, his hands cupping her face, trying to look into her mouth in case of….swelling or something. It’s gross, regardless. “For your shellfish allergy!”

“What?” he gawks. Seeing as shellfish has always been easy for him to avoid, Peter doesn’t give it a lot of thought. He’s definitely never told Tony about it. “How do you know about that?”

“I know everything when it comes to keeping you safe,” he snaps. “I make sure there’s always one in your backpack.” 

“But...I lose my backpack like, every  _ month.” _

“Right. And when I buy you a new one, it comes with a brand new shiny EpiPen! Now go  _ get it!” _

Both Peter and Morgan startle at the crack in his voice, but Peter’s the only one that jumps off the couch completely, heading to the kitchen where his backpack lays half open on the counter. He’s deliberately takes his time digging through all the zips until Tony cries out with a snap of his name and he opens the last zipper and - lo and behold - there’s an EpiPen.

Despite the anxiety of what they’re doing, Peter finds a moment to be touched by Tony’s actions. 

“ _ Peter!” _

He startles and drops the pen, only to catch it with the top of his foot because he’s Spider-Man and he can do cool stuff like that. With a vice grip, he holds the pen in one hand and heads back to the couch, hovering behind at what he assumes is a safe distance. Tony is mumbling quiet reassurances to her even as she pushes him away, desperate to tell him she thinks she’s fine. It’s obvious that Morgan regrets what she’s done, even if only a little. Frantic Tony, hilarious. Annoyed Tony, extra hilarious. Scared to Death for His Children Tony…….

Peter regrets all his life choices. 

“Um,” Peter squeaks out, holding the pen above his head when Tony grabs it. “Maybe we should...wait?”

“Wait? Kid, she could stop  _ breathing -” _

“- if you inject her with an EpiPen without an obvious reaction.” Peter is quick to fish out his phone, as well as keep the medicine on him and away from Tony. “Side effects of injecting without an allergic reaction includes increased heart rate, deregulated breathing -”

“Breathing is still  _ breathing -” _

“ - numbness and tingling, chest tightness, blurred vision - oh my god, if we inject it wrong she could get  _ ventricular tachycardia _ -”

“I don’t want ventricollar tackycardswhatever,” Morgan says. “Daddy, I feel fine.”

Tony pauses, sighing loudly out of his nose. He gives his daughter another once over as he smooths her hair out of her face, kissing her on the nose. “You sure you’re okay? Your chest doesn’t feel tight? Just...take a big breath in, yeah? Can you do that for me?”

Morgan’s face falls a little as she does what he asks of her, eyes shining with tears the whole time. Guilty tears. Frightened tears.  _ Worried if she doesn’t say something Dad’s gonna stab her with an EpiPen  _ tears.

They’re so fucked.

“I’m not allergic,” she whispers. “I promise.”

Peter is stressed. He’s very stressed. And when he’s stressed, he eats. While Tony fusses over his daughter, Peter makes way to the fridge and starts digging through leftovers, wondering what’s an appropriate last meal for a superhero as super and heroic as Spider-Man. What did Jesus eat at the last supper? Okay, that’s a stretch. Though considering the prank he just pulled maybe he should be considering what death row inmates order as their last meal.

He finds some fried rice from the takeout they all had last night.

That’ll do.

“Peter are you  _ eating?”  _ Tony asks when the cutlery makes enough noise in the drawer to draw his attention. “Listen, Morgan -”

He shovels some rice into his mouth. Every single hair on the back of his neck stands up in fear of what he’s about to admit. He tries to remain as bland as possible. “- is just fine. I swear. She’s not allergic. Call May if you want to be sure.”

Tony frowns, confused. “You...got her tested?”

“Not exactly?”

The confusion starts to melt away into anger. “What...does that mean?”

“We kinda found out when she ate one yesterday?”

Silence.

And then Peter and Morgan just  _ explode. _

“Peter said it would be a science experiment if I wrote everything down -”

“ - I did not agree to this, I did not know anything about the strawberry fiasco -”

“ - so that’s what I did, I wanted it to be a test - “

“ - she ordered a whole ass strawberry smoothie like a  _ death wish  _ or something like seriously I have no clue what’s wrong with her -”

“ - and it’s not like anything bad was going to happen I mean Peter’s  _ Spider-Man  _ he’s always going to protect me -”

“- I would think she’s smart enough to know I can’t protect from allergies but I guess not all the genius in her brain has been activated yet -”

“ - and it’s fine, his spider-sense didn’t go off, he took me to the hospital, nothing happened, I’m not allergic -”

“Stop.”

Both Morgan and Peter’s mouths clamp shut. Audibly. Like, the noise seriously bounces off the walls.

Tony can be mad scary when he wants to be.

While Tony stews in silence, David Attenborough continues to narrate the deep sea wonders of their oceans.

_ “Here, in the deep midwater, predators play a patient game -” _

The bright blue of the angler fish’s lure shines like Tony’s old arc reactors, luring the tiny little helpless fish and then -!  _ Chomp!  _ Dead. Killed. Eaten.

A premonition if Peter’s ever seen one.

He shovels more rice into his mouth. Chicken has never tasted so rubbery. 

“Let me get this straight,” Tony says, voice low. “My daughter did something decidedly stupid and dangerous and while that’s  _ bad enough…. _ you thought it the smart idea to keep it from me? To what?” He holds up the ice cream carton, sweating with condensation. “ _ Trick me _ ?”

Peter takes a deep breath, but it’s hard. His nerves make shallow pools of his lungs. “I wouldn’t say I thought it was a smart idea,” he coughs, wheezing a little. 

"It's not! Peter, I've got a bad heart! Are you trying to kill me!"

"No! I know you have a bad heart, I mentioned the bad heart, I was _very concerned about the bad heart._ Look, I was definitely against it -”

“If you were really against it!” Tony squawks. Literally squawks. His anger is a little bit squeaky, if you ask Peter. “You wouldn’t have done it.”

“Aw, come on!” He gestures to Morgan. He coughs again. Maybe he has some rice stuck in his throat. “You know her powers of persuasion! I can’t say no to her. Legally. It’s literally  _ illegal -” _

Peter clams up, and takes another deep breath to try and calm himself down, but it’s...hard. The shallow pools of his lungs are now a completely dry well. While Tony’s anger isn’t usually a place he finds himself in front of, it’s not  _ unknown  _ to him. It’s not fun to be on the receiving end, but it’s not  _ impossible.  _ There’s some shame and embarrassment, but Peter’s handled it before.

He doesn’t know why he’s freaking out.

Luckily, Tony notices Peter’s struggle to stay calm and like,  _ take a breath.  _ “Kid, hey,” he says, considerably calmer. “I know I’m mad, but c’mon, you know me. I love you no matter what stupid shit you pull -”

The hairs on the back of his neck are still standing on end.  _ Danger Danger Danger. _

He opens his mouth to say as much, but he can’t. His face feels hot. Red. He wonders if it’s red. He looks down at his food, wondering if like,  _ the hottest jalapeno  _ made its way into the fried rice without his knowledge when he sees it. 

_ That’s  _ why the chicken tasted so off.

“Daddy!” Morgan screams, bounding over the back of the couch. Her finger is pointing at the food. “Daddy, Pete’s eating my shrimp fried rice!”

_ “Shit -”  _ Tony barely gets the swear out before he’s running over to Peter’s side, medicine in hand. Peter has a Herculean grip on the counter and he’s pretty sure he  _ chips the marble  _ when Tony tries to get him to relax and lay down so he can help him. He ends up murmuring the same soft assurances to Peter as he did Morgan:  _ you’re okay, I got you, it’s gonna be just fine, you’re with me you’ll be okay. _

As it turns out, Tony did end up stabbing him that day. But instead of a knife to kill him it was a shot to save his life. 

Always the hero, Iron Man.

“So,” Peter eventually says when the medicine does its job and his breathing is manageable. “Turns out the radioactive spider got rid of my asthma but not the shellfish allergy.”

Peter’s head ends up in Tony’s lap while they wait for the worst of it to past, for May to come up and check up on him and see if they need a visit to the hospital. Tony’s got one hand in Peter’s hair, gently scratching at his scalp, while the other is wrapped around the kid’s middle, holding him close as they lay sprawled out on the couch.

David Attenborough is still narrating the deep blue sea. 

Morgan, from her close perch on the coffee table, leans over and says, “I’ll be sure to write it down," before she reaches into her backpack and pulls out the notebook and pen that kinda sorta started this whole thing. “Does this classify as an experiment even if it wasn’t on purpose?”

Tony groans.

On the television, Planet Earth starts talking about shrimp. 

Peter laughs. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ssh!!! I was supposed to be writing other things! I mean, I did. I tabbed back and forth on this WIP and another, but I had started this awhile ago and forgot about it so I just slapped on an ending and got it up so it got done first. still. don't tell my wife tho.


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